Caricom meets ahead of landmark high seas talks

RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

Cari­com coun­tries are strength­en­ing their re­gion­al prepa­ra­tions ahead of the in­au­gur­al Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP1) to the Agree­ment on Ma­rine Bi­o­log­i­cal Di­ver­si­ty of Ar­eas Be­yond Na­tion­al Ju­ris­dic­tion (BB­NJ Agree­ment), fol­low­ing a re­gion­al work­shop in The Ba­hamas.

The Oc­to­ber meet­ing brought to­geth­er re­gion­al ne­go­tia­tors, tech­ni­cal ex­perts, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Cari­com mem­ber states and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner or­gan­i­sa­tions to co­or­di­nate the Caribbean's ap­proach to the land­mark in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment.

The COP1 meet­ing is sched­uled to take place at Unit­ed Na­tions Head­quar­ters in New York from Jan­u­ary 11 to 22, 2027.

Adopt­ed un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea, the BB­NJ Agree­ment es­tab­lish­es an in­ter­na­tion­al frame­work for the con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able use of ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty in ar­eas be­yond na­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tion, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as the high seas.

Its im­ple­men­ta­tion is ex­pect­ed to strength­en in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion in ad­dress­ing shared ocean chal­lenges, pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble ma­rine ecosys­tems and en­sur­ing that the ben­e­fits of ma­rine re­sources are man­aged sus­tain­ably.

The Cari­com Re­gion­al Prepara­to­ry Work­shop was or­gan­ised by the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mar­itime and Ocean Af­fairs Bu­reau of The Ba­hamas' Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs.

It re­ceived sup­port from The Com­mon­wealth, The Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts, the High Seas Al­liance and the Gov­ern­ment of The Ba­hamas.

The dis­cus­sions pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­gion­al ne­go­tia­tors to deep­en their un­der­stand­ing of the agree­ment, ex­change tech­ni­cal per­spec­tives, clar­i­fy out­stand­ing is­sues and iden­ti­fy ar­eas for co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion ahead of the first meet­ing of the par­ties.

Am­bas­sador and Plenipo­ten­tiary Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of The Ba­hamas to Cari­com, Sen­a­tor Robyn Lynes, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the Caribbean main­tain­ing a strong and co­or­di­nat­ed voice in shap­ing the agree­ment's im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Lynes said Cari­com had a crit­i­cal role to play in en­sur­ing that the rules, process­es and in­sti­tu­tions es­tab­lished un­der the agree­ment al­lowed all par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, re­gard­less of their size or lev­el of de­vel­op­ment, to mean­ing­ful­ly in­flu­ence de­ci­sions on ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty be­yond na­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tion.

She al­so high­light­ed the close re­la­tion­ship be­tween ocean health and the well-be­ing of Caribbean peo­ple.

For the re­gion's Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), healthy and re­silient ma­rine ecosys­tems are fun­da­men­tal to food se­cu­ri­ty, liveli­hoods, eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The prepara­to­ry dis­cus­sions there­fore rep­re­sent an im­por­tant step in en­sur­ing Caribbean coun­tries are equipped to par­tic­i­pate ef­fec­tive­ly in the emerg­ing glob­al frame­work.

As the re­gion faces mount­ing pres­sures on its ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, Cari­com's co­or­di­nat­ed en­gage­ment at COP1 will be im­por­tant in en­sur­ing that the in­ter­ests and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of small is­land states are re­flect­ed in de­ci­sions gov­ern­ing the fu­ture of the world's oceans.